It's back to the drawing board on red snapper (editorial)

IT SHOULD be unsettling to the National Marine Fisheries Service that the red snapper data it has been using to regulate the Gulf’s most important commercial and recreational fishery are likely flawed.

Researchers are developing new data that show red snapper are not overfished to the degree that had been thought. (Press-Register file photo)

Regulators have long relied on commercial fishing records to determine the age and size of the snapper population. The information led them to believe that the population has too few older snapper and, therefore, has been overfished.

As a result, the 2011 season was one of the shortest on record.

Fortunately, work by scientists at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab has brought the discrepancy to light. Scientists say the fishing methods used by commercial fishermen inadvertently helped to skew the catch data and the fisheries models.

Commercial fishermen purposely use fishing lines rigged with multiple small hooks and small baits, called bandit rigs, in order to quickly catch the 14-¤to 16-inch snapper that bring the highest price. There’s nothing wrong with this method, of course, unless someone uses the resulting catch numbers in a scientific assessment.

Scientists discovered that when they employed larger hooks and bait, the larger and older snapper were out there; they just weren’t being caught by commercial fishermen. No wonder the Gulf looked so heavily fished.

There are at least two points to be gleaned from this finding.

First, it now appears that the recovery of the snapper population is ahead of where regulators think it is. There are more fish that are 10 years old and even 15 years old than previously thought. This is good news, because older fish are a sign of a healthier population.

Next, the catch limit and the length of the snapper season likely have been lower and shorter, respectively, than were really necessary.

Regulators say they now have funding related to the BP oil spill with which to conduct surveys similar to what the scientists did. If that’s so, then they also need to immediately feed the new data into a computer model and update the regulations.

Because the previous surveys are misleading, it would not be appropriate to base next year’s catch limits on 3-year-old data, as is usually the case because of the government’s review process. In the meantime, it would be helpful to review how regulators predict other fish populations.

Now, more than ever, scientists, regulators and community leaders in states along the Gulf of Mexico have to have the most accurate data possible on which to base their conclusions and decisions. This is a vital part of monitoring the ecosystem, especially in the wake of the oil spill.